Xanthe

Thank you! I remember the pre-Majorca drama with Catlin on the lam and Donna keeping him in her secret cellar room. Sally had been hypnotized to try to recall details of David's murder, and I believe that it was in the hypnosis session that she remembered seeing a woman's hand with a ring holding the gun that shot David. But also the hypnotist had programmed Sally to shoot Catlin, which explains the shocking scene here. Marley's hair was quite something in her scene with Ben in the stables. I did love though how both the presence of Catlin and Marley's relationship with Ben opened up the revelations about Donna's lost love and Marley's parentage. Anna Stuart was terrific.

I read this and could not believe my eyes. I could neither remember it nor imagine it. So I rushed to the AWHP to get the deets and although I found them I still feel like I am being pranked. And I find it hard to believe that the show took the relationship seriously either because it seems like they never had a real sexual relationship. It's ridiculous. Also apparently this was around the time that Rachel had been blind again for some reason. Wow.

The credits have Sam Hall as the HW and the change to Margaret dePriest will be in weeks if not days at this point. There's a lot going on on the Love side and it won't be long before Mitch is back which occupies Rachel a bit. In a less hectic environment I expect there would have been more Rachel and Michael but it feels like it got disregarded in the HW transition. It would have been nice for Michael to interact with Ada as well.

That was the first thing she asked him about, as a matter of fact. And they talk about being latchkey kids and hanging out together after school wishing their mothers were home, which doesn't sound like he lived on a farm. He also doesn't mention knowing Iris, but he doesn't claim not to know Iris either.

That was before they decided that Michael had actually lived out of town on a farm with his mother Clara and his brother John.

Happy New Year @slick jones and everyone! Excited to have seen the clip of Kelly Bishop as Cecile's cellmate in the AW thread!

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Reading the synopses from 1979, they established then that Cecile suspected that Philip had originally dumped her because she wouldn't have access to her inheritance until she was 35. And then later when it was revealed that the Count was not her biological father and actually Elena and Louis St George were her bio parents there was a mention that she would be entitled to Louis' Swiss bank account. It is not clear to me whether the parentage reveal was explicitly supposed to have caused her to forfeit any inheritance from the Count or if it was still inaccessible to her at her age (did they ever admit that she had reached the age of 35?), but Cecile was definitely interested in Louis' (ill-gotten) money at that time. One of the reasons Iris liked the idea of Cecile for Dennis would have been her background. The same for Donna befriending Cecile and wanting her to replace Sally in Peter's affections. And although soaps will bend over backwards to come up with reasons why rich characters are suddenly poor in order to create conflict, I don't think we should ever underestimate how much already rich people can feel entitled to even more money than they already have or at least how much they need to remain very very comfortable -- how many titled Brits married American heiresses? How motivated are multi-millionaires and billionaires to avoid paying more taxes? I have complained of not liking Jamie as a doctor when he returned in 1986, but I did notice a mention in 1979 that he was making plans to go to medical school and discussed them with Cecile. Thanks @watson71 for the videos. I could not believe my ears when Cecile and Peter announced the theme of their wedding on such short notice and then everyone readily showed up in costume.

I would argue that when Brittany was introduced she was not written as a pure villain. It seemed to me that they made her deaf and included her and Catlin's dead baby and her good friend Zane in order to bolster her sympathetic side because they knew she would be hated for coming between a very popular couple. It wasn't until after Mary Page Keller left and Taylor Miller replaced her that Brittany started out and out maliciously scheming and lying in order to get what she wanted. And then of course in the dePriest era they made Peter the villain and Brittany his victim.

Thank you! I find the Catlin and Sally scenes hard to watch because they are very emotionally unsatisfying -- Sally is so cold and Catlin is nowhere near sorry enough. And seeing Kevin complain that he loves Catlin, knowing that within the year Sally will be dead and even though she had reconciled with and married Catlin Liz would take Kevin out of town so that Catlin didn't have to give him a second thought when getting back together with Brittany less than a year after Sally's death, absolutely drives me crazy. Obviously they decided there was no story left there since the Matthews and Ewings were outside the Cory/Love/McKinnon framework dePriest wanted to establish in 1986, but it didn't have to be that way. Was Raven on The Edge of Night the same kind of blatant schemer that Brittany had become by this time? Carl pops up again one last time in Arizona and fights with Chris before appearing to possibly drown or something. Marley shooting him seems to be all in a day's work for Carl. Seeing Mac talk about how evil Carl is here is very uncomfortable when you think about his marrying Rachel eventually.

Would the audience at the time have known it was a member of the Village People? I tried to figure out what it was about by looking at the synopses on the AWHP, and it mentions that Lurlene asked if she could meet Randy Jones, but there doesn't appear to be any resolution and the rest of the story seems to be some kind of action adventure involving Ruby.

I didn't have a clear picture in my mind of Lurlene so I searched for a video and this was the first clip that came up.

If she had dug deep into the characterization of the people in those families perhaps she could have kept it going for longer. She didn't offer a description for the Loves other than rich and contrasting them with the Corys by saying they were rich but with a social conscience seems weak. It would be one thing if the comments had been superficial and the writing deeper but ultimately I don't think it was simply casting that caused problems, it was an overall shallowness. David Forsyth was a good actor but John didn't develop as a character until the writing post-dePriest grounded his issues in Vietnam rather than his lust for Donna. Anne Heche's Victoria also became more interesting after Reginald was out of the picture and she had a bad girl purpose.

I appreciate the links at the top of the Cancelled Soaps forum but if it is possible I think it would be even better if they linked to the first unread post instead of the top of the thread.

That's part of the reason I thought it was intended to hint at homosexuality until it was almost sanitized. It looks like Virginia Browne was the HW who created Sandy. Would she have been tempted to write a gay character?

I'm not sure whether Sandy detracted from Jamie in any meaningful way. Once Dennis left it made sense for there to be another young man in the Cory family that Jamie could be friends or rivals with. It's true that Sandy also married Jamie's first couple of wives but Jamie had moved on by the time Sandy got involved with Blaine, hadn't he? Jamie and Sandy could have had mild conflict or mutual support over Cory family or business or love triangle if Sandy had not been written out. Was there ever a plan to write Sandy as gay or am I reading too much into his escort past?